This invention relates to spinning, knitting, preshrinking and stabilizing fabrics, either of all-cellulosic fibers or of blends comprising cellulosic with man-made thermoplastic fibers, and is concerned more particularly with developing predictable and reliable knit-design parameters to produce knitted fabrics having dimensional stability and enhanced comfort fit of garments made therefrom.
In knitted fabrics, as distinguished from woven fabrics, the fabrics are constructed in both their lengthwise and widthwise directions by series of interlocked loops formed by continuous yarns or series of continuous yarns. As a result, knitted fabrics have substantial interdependence of their length and width dimensions, and they are distortable easily. This property has made knitted fabrics desirable for many articles of apparel; because of ability of garments made of knitted fabrics to conform to bodies and change their shapes for accommodating body movements. However, it seems fair to note that this foregoing desirable property, which enhances acceptability of knitted fabrics for wearing apparel, presents formidable problems in processing knitted fabrics. Such problems are compounded by need of knitted fabrics to recover and retain their shapes in garments as made after repeated wearings and washings. These problems are compounded further when knitted fabrics are blended of a man-made thermoplastic component (such as a polyester) with a cellulosic fiber component (such as cotton or rayon).
It has been difficult properly to knit, preshrink and stabilize fabrics of all-cellulosic fibers, as well as fabrics blended of man-made thermoplastic and cellulosic fibers, so as to control accurately and uniformly knitting, preshrinking and stabilizing of the fabrics whereby to provide predictable and uniform dimensional stability. Prior-art methods of knitting, preshrinking and stabilizing such fabrics also have been deficient in comfort fit of garments formed therefrom. Further these prior-art methods have affected adversely other properties of such fabrics.